


Shark Bait

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Category: Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:58:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conner comes across a merman while on vacation in the Caribbean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Every summer, Conner’s fathers bring him down to the island of Saint John in order to relax. He can’t remember a summer when he wasn’t free to roam the small island with the few friends that he knows from the various public schools.

He loves that he can just wander around the island and feel perfectly at home. Here, he isn’t ‘Mister Luthor’s Boy.’

He’s just Conner to the other wealthy vacationers and Kon to his friends.

He doesn’t have to be anyone else while they’re here. And it works for him.

The water lapping at the shore of the beach is clear and perfect even with left over palm fronds floating atop its surface, leftover debris from the last hurricane to hit the island. Conner doesn’t even have to use his superhuman senses in order to see the brightly colored fish darting back and forth among the coral. He walks barefoot across the shore with Krypto trotting beside him, rubber ball held fast in the dog’s mouth as they search for the perfect place to rest on the private beach that sits adjacent to his fathers’ private summer home.

“What do you think, Krypto,” Conner says once they’re far away from the main house that he has to squint and focus in order to see his fathers as they sit together in front of television set. “Is here a good place to stop?”

Krypto lets his toy drop to the ground and then barks up at Conner as his slender white tail whips back and forth happily. It’s a good answer.

Conner crouches down and then picks up his pet’s soggy rubber ball. When he stands up, he pulls his arm back and lets the ball fly in the direction of the crystal clear Caribbean waters. “Go get it, boy,” he says with a wide smile and almost before his sentence is finished, Krypto is racing into the water, leaving clouds of sand floating up in the air to choke Conner until the teenager can fan it away and then flop on the sand to wait.

He doesn’t expect Krypto to come back right away –it had been a good, hard throw– but when ten minutes go past with no sight or sound of his dog, Conner starts to get worried.

And then he smells it, the salt and metal scent intense even with the salt from the ocean waters around him: Blood. And he’s seen the sharks milling around near the bottom of the cliffs waiting eagerly for the left over scraps from dinner.

They can’t hurt Krypto, but--

He doesn’t have time to think before he’s moving, getting into the water and swimming away from the shore in the direction where he had thrown the ball. Flying would probably have been faster and Conner realizes that when he’s halfway there and the salt is stinging his open eyes.

But it’s _Krypto_. If anything happens to that silly dog, especially while on Conner’s watch, the teenager will never be able to forgive himself.

The scent of blood is barely recognizable from the salt of the water, and Conner has no idea how close he is until, on a whim, he ducks his head underneath the surface of the water for a look that’s not obscured by the waves.

What he sees makes him gulp in a good mouthful of water before he remembers to shut his mouth.

There’s a pale skinned mer- _something_ going up against a massive shark from the front as Krypto digs his sharp teeth and nails into the big fish’s flesh.There’s blood everywhere, but thankfully Krypto looks to be unharmed as he rends the shark’s flesh to shreds. The shark is bleeding like crazy though and so is the merman as blood forms a cloud around his shoulder.

They’re both injured and Conner really doesn’t see things ending well.

Conner swims closer just in time to see the merman neatly dodge the shark’s teeth and then lay its side open with the tip of a crudely made spear. The kill is far from neat and there’s so much blood and offal in the water that even if Conner _could_ breathe underwater, he’d be holding his breath. He kicks upward and then, when his head clears the water, sucks in as much air as he can and glances around.

One shark is dead, but when Conner focuses, he can see the dark shapes of several others making their way towards them. They’re probably attracted by the blood, but the shark isn’t the only thing bleeding underwater…

“Aww, shit.”

Back underwater, Conner is quick to grab Krypto’s collar and nudge him up to the surface of the water. When he hears Krypto clear the surface, Conner reaches for the merman and pulls him close. The other male’s skin is slick and cool underneath his fingers, but even the scrape of scales of Conner’s fingers doesn’t stop him from pulling him so close that he can swim up to the surface.

“Can you breathe on the surface,” Conner mouths when they’re close to the surface of the water. He isn’t sure that the merman can understand him, but then the dark haired male nods quickly and then wraps his arms around Conner’s shoulders as they float a good distance above the ocean.

Back on the surface, the light bounces off of the water and when Conner looks down, the other sharks are already converging on the body of the other shark.

“That was a close one huh,” Conner murmurs as he flies off in the direction of an uninhabited little island that he’s only visited a handful of times. Krypto barks happily and does a little flip in midair. The merman just kinda… shakes in Conner’s arms the higher and faster they go.

Conner feels bad for a moment, but then he notices the increasing amount of blood trickling down the other man’s arm and he hurries in his flight. He’s seen a lot of things in his life, but mermaids –mer _men_ – are new and Conner will be dammed if he lets this one get hurt without so much as finding out his name.


	2. The Difference Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim’s rescuer isn’t a normal human and he doesn’t have the usual reaction to merpeople.

Humanity is nothing new to Tim.

He’s seen them hundreds of times before from behind gently waving branches of neon coral fronds. Everywhere he swims it seems that humanity is to be found with their tender skin and brightly colored clothing. Tim doesn’t mind humans all that much. He’s not like some of the others in their group, those bitter scaly creatures that threaten uprisings and mass killings. To Tim, humans represent the good things about the parts of the planet that he’s not able to explore on his own.

However, the human holding him close in midair isn’t like the travelers that Tim and his kind usually have to hide from. He’s big and broad, warm like the surface of the water when Tim swims too close to avoid feeling the heat on his own skin. The human is also flying above the water. Tim has seen plenty of strange things in his years under the sea, but from what he’s learned of humans, they don’t fly.

The human is so interesting, that Tim can almost ignore the slow burn of his injury and the way that he has to be losing more blood than he can replace on his own. Thinking about his injury makes Tim remember how badly he is hurt, and he clutches his arm to his chest as blood trickles down his skin.

“Oh crap,” Tim hears the human say as they dip in their flight. “I forgot you were hurt. I can’t take you back home… Where can I go?” The human starts to look around the ocean, peering into the distance as though he can see something aside from clear waters.

Tim frowns mildly and then bites his bottom lip as he prepares to go against everything that his parents and his clan preached. The human is so busy looking for land in large quantities that he’s all but blind to the little coves and sandbars speckling the surface of the sea. Normally, Tim would try to keep his ability to speak in several human languages a secret, but the blood lust is making him sloppy.

“There’s a little island a little left of here,” Tim says in a voice gone raspy from disuse. “If you get a little lower down, you’ll be able to see it.” A few seconds later, Tim gets a chance to experience the unpleasant feeling of being dropped while held high above the water as the human makes a loud, shocked noise.

Clear blue water rushes up to meet Tim who closes his eyes tight so that he doesn’t have to look at the water and remember how shallow the water really is.

And then when he doesn’t hit the surface of the warm ocean water, Tim cracks one eye open and winds up staring up at his human rescuer. “You caught me,” he says in a voice far breathier than he’d prefer. “I didn’t think you’d—”

The human grins as though he’s not the reason why Tim’s hearts are pumping so fast and lifts Tim easily, holding him close as though they’re far more intimate than they are. “I wouldn’t have let you hit the water,” the human insists, still smiling as Tim continues to lean on him. “I shouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

“I agree,” Tim says, narrowing his eyes up at the human for a brief moment before the intensity of the human’s gaze makes him scowl and glance down at his silver-scaled tail. “Can you hurry and find the island? I’m starting to dry out.”  Tim’s voice comes out with an edge and he’s pleased to notice the way that the human leaps to attention at it. “And in case you’ve forgotten, I’m still bleeding out.”


End file.
